PEAKS AND STORMS
THE ART OF SOFONISBA ANGUISSOLA
with Flavio Caroli
historian of modern and contemporary art
The festival begins its journey by honoring the story of a woman, Sofonisba Anguissola, who made artistic practice a recognized and honorable activity, becoming the first great woman painter in the history of Italian art between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A cosmopolitan artist at the heart of Renaissance Europe, who the art historian Flavio Caroli helps us meet in the more intimate folds of her soul. There are multiple peaks that the Cremonese painter reached in her lifetime (she was a lady and painting master of Queen Isabella of Valois at the Spanish court) who knew how to overcome storms with determination and nonconformity.
Like in a mirror. The secret diary of Sofonisba Anguissola is the book written by Professor Caroli and published by Rizzoli on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the artist's passing in 1625, just a few months after the visit of the young Anton van Dyck who portrays her, leaving the last face of the myth of Sofonisba.
